We’re one week into the DonorsChoose Bloggers Challenge, and we’re already off to a great start. Thanks to some generous donations, we’ve already (as of the publishing of this post) raised $295 here at The Scientific Activist (30% of our $1,000 goal). Even more impressively, the participants at ScienceBlogs have together raised over $12,500. And, we still have over three weeks to go!

So, let me thank you all for your generosity, and, if you haven’t donated yet, please take a look at the projects that need funding. Even a little bit goes a long way. One project that I’d particularly like to see funded, “Hey Mom, Dad, Grandma, You Can Do Science Too!” addresses public understanding of science in addition to basic science education. Here’s an excerpt from the project’s description:

My students struggle when they are at home trying to explain to their parents what they are doing in science. That is where your generosity can help to overcome this problem. We want a family science night in which the parents are directly involved in being scientists, predicting, hypothesizing, experimentation, and finding results – all the time jotting their work in a scientific notebook.

The greatest solution to this problem was to come up with the necessary experiments and tools that would allow the parents to work with their child and learn the methods of scientific research that the students are conducting during the school day. I WANT MY PARENTS TO BE INVOLVED. This will definitely involve them. The supplies that have been requested will fulfill the needs for 56 experiments which the parents will rotate participating with their child on an evening from 6:00 – 8:30 pm. in the Spring, 2008. Each parent/child team will complete five – seven experiments. The entire school will be invited to participate.